Philip Maddocks: Alert system will warn of impending admonitions about federal spending

Philip Maddocks

Friday

Feb 18, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 18, 2011 at 6:15 PM

Congress unveiled a coded alert system today designed to give the nation advanced warning that a lawmaker may be preparing to deliver a cataclysmic pronouncement about the imminent danger posed by federal spending.

Congress unveiled a coded alert system today designed to give the nation advanced warning that a lawmaker may be preparing to deliver a cataclysmic pronouncement about the imminent danger posed by federal spending.

House leaders said that the current alert level was Disastrous, meaning that Rep. Paul Ryan was in the building and the likelihood of him delivering a new apocalyptic debt warning was “significant” but not “severe.”

The ranking system was developed in response to complaints from the public that a series of vague federal budget crisis alerts, which repeatedly used hazy terms such as “ballooning” and “belt-tightening,” had left citizens bewildered and perhaps insufficiently terrified.

“I know it is confusing for the public, what with us voting to extend tax cuts and adding to the federal debt even as we are issuing warnings about the irresponsibility of increasing the nation’s deficit. Sometimes I get confused, myself,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “Frankly, there is nothing I would rather do than to go back to the days when we were assuring the American people that deficits didn’t matter. But the world has changed and we have to change with it.”

In announcing the new system, Mr. Boehner said he hoped the budget crisis threat level could someday be reduced to Grim, which under the congressional definition would mean there was a low chance that a frightful, nation-ending claim about the federal deficit would be delivered by a lawmaker within the next 48 hours.

“But I certainly think that's years away,” Mr. Boehner said, adding that the United States faced the “permanent potential of a dire budget crisis claim” by current and former congressmen and other special interest groups.

Under the ranking system, the highest-level warning is Calamitous — which signifies a “severe risk” of a congressman proclaiming that the country will suffer a ruinous and immediate end if it doesn’t immediately pay off its debt — followed by Dreadful, Disastrous, Appalling and Grim.

The new five-level warning system was developed after consultations with grammarians, political consultants, and doomsday prophesiers.

The International Association of Political Overstatement, which represents major political parties and is the self-described “voice of unreason in today’s partisan climate,” welcomed the system, saying it would bring some order to their efforts to respond to the deluge of deficit warnings and to advise members of the public on what level of fear they should be experiencing.

“This is a good, simplistic method to help prepare the average citizen for emotional messages that are not backed up by fact or reason,” said the group's president, Berger B. Smith.

On Capitol Hill, the ranking Republican in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, praised the new warning system but said Congress still needed to do more to add precision to the daily fear-inducing claims about the immediate threat posed to the nation by the budget deficit.

“Public insecurity over the government’s finances is not as simple as Calamitous to Grim,” said Mr. McConnell, who thinks the five-level warning system paints too rosy a picture of the looming budget crisis. “We have to face up to the tough choices in front of us and that means taking a long, hard look at them and using Tragic, Earth-shattering, and Devastating to enhance the message of doom.”

Under the new Budget Update Loquacious Lawmaker System, or BULL, a Calamitous alert would mean there is a “severe risk” that someone in Congress will threaten to call for an immediate government shutdown and demand that Ron Paul be appointed president.

A Dreadful alert would signify a “high risk” of a lawmaker demanding some arbitrary spending-cut total without specifying where those cuts should be made. A Disastrous alert would reflect an “elevated condition” and “significant risk” of a congressman comparing the federal budget to a family’s budget. Appalling would signify a “general risk” of an elected official warning that to do nothing about the ballooning deficit was not an option.

Mr. Boehner said a number of factors are used to analyze the threat level.

“Is what is going to be said sufficiently incredible? Is it based on an incredible source? Is it an uncorroborated threat? Is it suitably unspecific as to dollar amounts and logic? All of those things will figure in the determination,” he said

“But in the end,” Mr. Boehner added, “it is up to the American people to misjudge and misinterpret what we say because we are all in this together.”

Philip Maddocks can be reached at pmaddock@cnc.com.

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